Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea: Economy and Society: 9789004261129: The Organization of Korean Historians, Shin, Michael D, Shin, Michael D: Books

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Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea: Economy and Society 

Illustrated Edition
by The Organization of Korean Historians (Author), 

Michael D Shin (Editor, Translator)
4.3 out of 5 stars 2 ratings



Winner of the 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award

Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea shows how the momentous changes of the time transformed the lives of the common people. In twenty-three concise chapters, the book covers topics ranging from agriculture, commerce, and mining to education, marriage, and food culture. It examines how both the spread of Neo-Confucianism in the early Joseon period and its decline from the seventeenth century impacted economic and social life.

The book also demonstrates that much of what is thought of as ancient Korean tradition actually developed in the Joseon period. Chapters in this book discuss how customs such as ancestor worship, the use of genealogies, and foods such as kimchi all originated or became widespread in this era.

Contributors: 

Kim Kuentae, Yeom Jeong Sup, Kim Sung Woo, Lee Hun-Chang, Lee Uk, Yoo Pil Jo, Kim Kyung-ran, Kim Eui-Hwan, Oh Soo-chang, Ko Dong-Hwan, Kwon Nae-Hyun, Lee Hae Jun, Jung Jin Young, Kwon Ki-jung, Han Sang Kwon, Kwon Soon-Hyung, Jang Dong-Pyo, Seo-Tae-Won, Sim Jae-woo, Chung Yeon-sik, O Jong-rok, Hong Soon Min. This volume was co-translated by Edward Park and Michael D. Shin.

Peter H. Lee
4.9 out of 5 stars 25
Paperback
36 offers from $18.5

Editorial Reviews

Review
Winner of the 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award

"Shin and Park have produced an eminently readable translation of a well-known and popular Korean-language history of Joseon-era Korea from 1996. 

How Did People Live in the Joseon Period? 

Shin's lively introduction provides an excellent overview of the Joseon era, which spanned from 1392 to 1910, offering readers sufficient historiographic background without getting bogged down by minutia. 

The subsequent chapters, rendered into fluid and engaging English, depart from the standard approach of more formal histories of Korea. 

Chapters cover topics as diverse as farming, currency, education, the penal system, the life and hard times of itinerant merchants, military life, food culture (including an interesting section on the origins of kimchi), and outhouses at the palaces. 

This focus on everyday life among the commoners interrupts earlier histories of Korea that focused largely on the ruling classes. 

The volume is beautifully illustrated and handsomely presented. 

A very helpful glossary and an excellent index complete the package. 

This book will be of considerable interest to students at the undergraduate levels (lower and upper division alike), and should find a spot on the bookshelves of general readers interested in the history of Korea."

 - T. R. Tangherlini, University of California, Los Angeles, in: CHOICE (July 2014) [Copyright American Library Assocation]

About the Author
Michael D. Shin, Ph.D. (2002), University of Chicago, is Lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has published research on early modern Korean history and is the co-editor of Landlords, Peasants, and Intellectuals in Modern Korea (Cornell East Asia Series, 2005).


Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Brill Academic Pub; Illustrated edition (January 9, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
4.3 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Contents

-- Preliminary Material / Michael D. Shin and Edward Park 

-- The Intimate Past: An Introduction to the Joseon Period / Michael D. Shin 

-- Farming in the Joseon Period / Kuentae Kim 

-- A Typical Day and Year in the Life of the Peasantry / Jeong Sup Yeom 

-- The Tax Burden of the Peasantry / Sung Woo Kim 

-- Currency and the Value of Money / Hun-Chang Lee 

-- The Merchants of Seoul / Uk Lee 

-- The Joys and Sorrows of the Itinerant Merchants / Pil JO Yoo 

-- Foreign Trade and Interpreter Officials / Kyung-ran Kim 

-- Salt: White Gold / Eui-Hwan Kim 

-- Seeking Work at Mines / Soo-chang Oh 

-- When Did Joseon’s Population Reach Ten Million? / Dong-Hwan Ko 

-- Rural Society and Zhu Xi’s Community Compact / Nae-Hyun Kwon 

-- Why Did Peasants Create the Dure? / Hae Jun Lee 

-- Did Fake Genealogies Exist? / Jin Young Jung 

-- The Baekjeong Class / Ki-jung Kwon 

-- The Rebellion of Im Ggeokjeong / Sang Kwon Han 

-- Did People Divorce in the Joseon Period? / Soon-Hyung Kwon 

-- The Educational System / Dong-Pyo Jang 

-- Military Life / Tae-Won Seo 

-- The Penal System / Jae-woo Sim 

-- Eating Culture / Yeon-sik Chung 

-- Liquor and Taverns / Yeon-sik Chung 

-- Tea and Tobacco / Jong-rok O 

-- The Outhouses of the Royal Palaces / Soon Min Hong 

-- About the Authors / Michael D. Shin and Edward Park 

-- Appendix – Monarchs of the Joseon Period / Michael D. Shin and Edward Park 

-- Glossary / Michael D. Shin and Edward Park 

-- Index / Michael D. Shin and Edward Park

Top review from the United States


The Book Fairy
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on August 10, 2017

This was a wonderful book to add to to personal study. One of the best ones I've run across.

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BOOK REVIEW| AUGUST 01 2015

Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea: Economy and Society. 

By The Organization of Korean Historians. Edited by Michael D. Shin. Translated by Edward Park and Michael D. Shin. Leiden: Global Oriental, 2014. xviii, 296 pp. $128.25 (cloth).

Michael J. Pettid

Journal of Asian Studies (2015) 74 (3): 768–770.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911815000911

This work is a translation of a 1996 Korean history book intended for general readers and designed to answer some of the questions that people had about life in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). It covers an impressive range of topics related to economy and society, such as farming, lives of the peasants, taxes, merchants, salt production, population growth, the lowborn class, divorce, the penal system, the eating culture, and the outhouses at the royal palace. These sorts of volumes are in quite high demand among Korean readers, and there have been a goodly number of volumes published over the past fifteen years to satiate this appetite for more specific knowledge on life in past times. Beyond that market niche, the works are generally easy to read and informative.

For those of us teaching premodern Korean history or culture at Western institutions, the question of how to incorporate daily life history (saenghwalsa) into our lectures is highly important. Students want to know much more than dates, names, and the major events, and the popularity of Korean historical dramas has caused students to wonder if what they are watching is actually the reality of past times in Korea. In this regard, a volume such as this one can fill a very important need in the classroom, especially for larger undergraduate courses not aimed at students with fluency in Korean.

Yet, at first glance, I feared that this volume would not be very useful. Translations of Korean academic works into English generally fall flat. This is not due to the translations necessarily, but rather the aim of the original work. Korean readers have a lot more background knowledge than would a reader in the West who is not a Koreanist. Thus the translations are oftentimes far too dense for students and need much explanation and supplementation by the instructor to bring about understanding.

This volume, however, proved to be different. I found the prose very readable and the content of most of the chapters—twenty-three in all—to be quite easily digested. Editor Michael Shin also provided a short introduction to each chapter that helps contextualize the translation that follows. The chapters on farming and aspects of the peasantry's lives are very good and will fit nicely into discussions of agrarian life in Chosŏn. Often overlooked lives—such as those of miners, itinerant merchants, and the lowborn—now can be better addressed with the short and informative chapters in this volume. Questions that students often have—say, those concerning divorce, life in the military, or the penal system—can now be answered through the chapters in this volume. And who would not want to read about the outhouses at the royal palaces? That will certainly put a new spin on the stately lives of the monarchs of Chosŏn. These are great additions to the materials we have available in English and will help give a fuller picture of life in Chosŏn Korea.

I do have some quibbles with the volume. First, the Romanization follows the horrid “new” system rather than the more standard McCune-Reischauer system found in most Western academic publications. Thus we are treated to Mr. Gim, Mr. Bak, and the Joseon dynasty, and this will undoubtedly cause confusion among some readers. I really do not understand why this change is being forced upon scholars working in the West: the new system does not aid readability a bit and now is in the process of creating a double lexicon for common terms and names.

Second, the translators did not bother to translate book titles for the most part. Even the glossary simply describes books; for example, Chibong yusŏl [Topical discourses by Chibong] is simply said to be a book by Yi Sugwang. For a history volume, this seems a fairly large oversight or shortcut. There are also a number of spots in the volume where a series of Korean terms are not translated (e.g., pp. 160, 174–75).

Finally, I wonder why the translators decided to describe nobi as “unfree” people. While I know this might be a sore point for scholars in Korea or Koreans in general, the fact of the matter is that people who are owned by others and are not free are slaves. No amount of tiptoeing around the fact changes what they were, and we should present things as straightforwardly as possible to our students.

One final comment concerns the price of the volume. I hope the publisher will issue a paper version of the book, as the price tag is probably too much to expect students to pay for supplementary material.

My complaints notwithstanding, I still believe this a fine work with great possibilities in the classroom. The various chapters answer all sorts of questions about everyday life and what things might have been like in Chosŏn Korea. I know that I will certainly add this volume to my history classes and am sure my students will enjoy the insight it provides.

Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015